EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Monday, April 12, 1999-11:11CDT 

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - Foreign ministers from NATO countries converged on Brussels on Monday in a show of unity against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic as alliance air strikes continued for a 20th day. The 19 ministers went into an all-day session to plot out their military, political and humanitarian plans in the Kosovo crisis as alliance missiles set ablaze an oil refinery and blasted a military airfield on the outskirts of Belgrade.

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - In an effort to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a peace agreement in Kosovo, NATO forces struck at Serbia's industrial heartland on Monday, returning to sites already hard hit in the allied air campaign. Western officials continued to express deep concern over the more than half-million ethnic Albanian refugees who have left the province, and hundreds of thousands of others displaced within Kosovo. In neighboring Albania, the worst border clashes between Kosovo rebels and Yugoslav forces in weeks left two people dead and nine others wounded.

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO warplanes struck hard at Serbia's industrial heartland on Monday, returning to sites already hit in the allied air campaign against Yugoslavia. In neighboring Albania, the worst border clashes between Kosovo rebels and Yugoslav forces in weeks left two people dead and nine others wounded.

The alliance acknowledged that poor weather has hampered its air campaign. Some aircraft came back from their latest missions with bombs undropped, but NATO refused to say how many. All returned safely.

In the industrial town of Pancevo just across the Danube from Belgrade, one of Yugoslavia's biggest oil refineries was bombed early today. NATO confirmed the hit, also reported by Serb media. The factory that makes Yugo cars -- housed in a complex that also makes weapons -- was hammered again early toda. The Zastava plant in Kragujevac, 45 miles southwest of Belgrade, was badly damaged last week.

The independent Beta news agency said the automaking assembly lines were badly damaged, and a NATO spokesman confirmed the car plant was targeted but said it was also manufacturing military vehicles.

Serb media also said that nearby Batajnica, site of a military airfield, was also hit. The latest wave of strikes also hit Serbia's second-largest city, Novi Sad, where two major bridges had already been destroyed early on in the air campaign. NATO said there were surface-to-air missile production and storage facilities in the area targeted. In the central Serbian town of Krusevac, a heating plant was destroyed as was a nearby factory.

Kosovo, which took the brunt of strikes on Sunday was hit again late in the day, when British Harrier jets struck a fuel storage depot in the southern Serbian province. Pristina's Slatina airport, whose terminal was reported wrecked in strikes late Saturday and early Sunday, came under new attack overnight. The region southeast of the capital was also targeted, with cluster bombs dropped in the southern municipality of Lipljani.

Amid growing Western concern about conditions in Kosovo, NATO officials showed aerial photographs Sunday of what was described as a possible mass grave in Pusto Selo outside the provincial capital, Pristina. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said Sunday the ground appeared to be freshly dug and the pictures resembled those of mass graves seen during the war in Bosnia.

British officials said about 100,000 ethnic Albanian men were believed missing, based on the low number of males among the refugees crossing into Macedonia and Albania. The estimate revived speculation the men had either been massacred by Serbs, joined the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army or were being held hostage.

On Yugoslavia's tense southern border, the conflict spilled over again into Albania. In the border town of Tropoja, heavy mortar fire hit border police headquarters and a residential neighborhood on Sunday, killing two people and wounding nine. More fighting at the Padesh border station, near Tropoja, wounded three KLA fighters and a French journalist. No further details were immediately available.

A Yugoslav army officer on the border told Serbian TV on Sunday that more KLA fighters were trying to infiltrate Kosovo from Albania.

By Jeremy Zakis, ERRI Analyst

AUSTRALIA (EmergencyNet News) - The Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, publicly denounced as outrageous, the detention of two Australian aid workers, who confessed that they spied for NATO in Yugoslavia. Downer on Monday also hauled in Yugoslavia's ambassador to demand their immediate release.

The action was prompted by a televised confession of spying by one of the aid workers, Steve Pratt. Downer says that the confession was a "preposterous fabrication" by Yugoslav television. But he has also lashed out at local media over reports Pratt spied in Iraq for the United Nations.

In response, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio said Pratt was a serviceman before becoming an aid worker of CARE Australia, a non-governmental aid agency. Downer was most concerned about a newspaper report which ran just hours before the appearance of Pratt on Yugoslav television on Sunday, which reported Pratt's mother as admitting her son spied for the United Nations in Iraq. "This wasn't an act of espionage, it's not an act of any significance in this case whatsoever," Downer said.

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